On Tense

I've been perusing some blogs the past few days. It shouldn't surprise me what people write about, what people need to get out, what people share, either in trust or vengeance, about people. It's obvious that there's a lot of pain going around. Here I thought I was doing people a favor by keeping my own to myself. There are a lot of blogs about the way guys treat girls (we're all jerks) and how girls would like to be treated (but there are no guys who aren't jerks so it's a moot point), and just general discontent in how people treat people. I've seen a few that were encouraging, a few that were inspiring, but as a whole I'm pretty discouraged. If it were just me, I'd get over it, but it seems too infrequent that one love might make it in a world so stacked against any love's success.

It's far too common to say we have all loved and lost. I feel like I do it every day. If I left it at that, I'd be more of a wreck than I often am. There are a lot of people out there with broken hearts believing in love at first sight. I do. I have to believe that when I open my eyes I will do everything in my power to walk in love, to eat in love, to be in love, reside in love, to live in love until I close my eyes at night. I fail. Every day there is either something I feel I could have should have would have done, or shouldn't have done, but all I can do is pray that I will learn from that mistake so I won't do it again tomorrow.

A lot of people don't know what they believe in when they talk about love. For many, it's subjective, malleable, shifting like tectonic plates, destined for disaster. It helps to have an idea to build on. I've penned embellishments, but my working definition is 1st Corinthians 13. I don't think you'll find a better description. Note that it's written in the present tense, and that "love never fails".

So how did we come up with "loved" anyway? When did this past tense become so pervaisive? Every depiction of love is characterized by a choice. Choices are made every day. Today I chose to love somebody to the best of my ability in spite of the circumstances that restrict those choices. I could keep it at that, and say tomorrow that I loved someone today, or I could do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and every day I'm given the grace to live until a choice is made to reciprocate that same love, or the seed falls onto something other than receptive soil. Some would say that such is already the case. Every friend I have, many whose council I trust, have encouraged me to move on. The problem I have with that is this past tense, "loved", that I see as the most painful habit in the world today.